Between a Cathouse and a Dog Track

Daytona Speedway celebrates five decades of American racing lore and legend.

Daytona International Speedway was built between a whorehouse and a dog-racing track, a fact of pure coincidence that nonetheless exemplifies the bacchanalian appetites of American racing drivers at the time the speedway came into existence.

“I don’t want to leave the impression that all racers were wild, drunk womanizers—just 80 percent of us,” wrote the late Henry “Smokey” Yunick in his rollicking three-volume memoir, Best Damn Garage in Town.

This year marks the 50th running of the Daytona 500, and the race is now America’s biggest. The Daytona 500 is more than twice as popular on television as the nation’s oldest race, the Indianapolis 500 (a 10.1 rating versus a 4.3), which was the biggest until NASCAR became American racing’s 800-pound gorilla.

But it was less than a lifetime ago that the concept of a great raceway at Daytona was just a dream of the shrewd, opportunistic, and sometimes ruthless William H.G. “Big Bill” France, co-founder of NASCAR.

What France figured in 1953 to be a two-year project ended up taking seven years, and when his anticipated partnerships fell through, both public and private, he built the place on the cheap, and on his own dime. He figured it would cost $750,000. It topped out at $2 million (or about $14 million in today’s money).

But the place was breathtaking, not only for its 2.5-mile size, which equaled Indy’s, but for the gut-pulling, 31-degree high-banked turns, which instantly made the fastest stock-car lap speeds jump by 30 mph, a 25-percent increase in the snap of a finger (from about 116 mph in 1958 at Darlington to 145 at Daytona).

The massive speedway fit the boundless ambition of the era, coming at the advent of the space race, as the first transcontinental jets whisked passengers from coast to coast in a matter of hours, and as Detroit churned out bigger, faster, more flamboyant cars every 12 months.

It was a time, too, when celebrities could get away with anything naughty this side of murder and the press helped keep their secrets. Racing drivers were no exception.

One of the more notorious characters was Curtis Turner, who gloried in his playboy reputation even though married, keeping bachelor’s digs in Charlotte that were “somewhat reminiscent of the Roman baths where orgies were supreme,” wrote his first biographer, D.L. “Doc” Morris.

After a couple of drinks, the legendary Glenn “Fireball” Roberts, also married, would “get very friendly and invite the whole motel into his room,” Yunick recalled. “What happened next was a voluntary process that was referred to as, ‘Let’s get naked and get in a pile.’ ”

Today, the atmosphere on the NASCAR Nextel Cup circuit is one of earnest seriousness, and even if he or she wanted to, no one seems to have the time to say, “Let’s start a brand-new party,” which was one of Turner’s favorite expressions.

Modern drivers live in a bubble, their personal lives protected by the sanctuary of their motorhome lot, which is sheltered from media access. The slip of the f-word uttered accidentally by a driver in the heat of the moment on television will cost him $25,000 and 25 Nextel Cup points, a deduction that equals being dropped from first to fourth place in a race.

Whatever drinkin’, cheatin’, and lyin’ being done there is more closeted today than ever before. The most scandalous act of 2006 was when newly crowned Cup champion Jimmie Johnson went golf-cart surfing on the roof of a cart, fell off, and broke his wrist. He was sober, too.